CJ nom­i­nee holds meet­ing on elec­tion pre­pared­ness

Chief Jus­tice nom­i­nee David Maraga has hit the ground run­ning, hold­ing his first meet­ing to dis­cuss elec­tion pre­pared­ness of the ju­di­ciary.

Jus­tice Maraga, who is the chair­man of the Ju­di­ciary Elec­tion Com­mit­tee, yes­ter­day met the team at the Mil­i­mani law courts to dis­cuss what needs to be put in place for the ju­di­ciary to be ready to han­dle pe­ti­tions aris­ing for the 2017 gen­eral elec­tion.

This is his first meet­ing since he was nom­i­nated by the Ju­di­cial Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on Thurs­day.

Judge Maraga be­gan the meet­ing at 6am and wel­comed his nom­i­na­tion. He promised to be ef­fi­cient in ser­vice de­liv­ery. Those in at­ten­dance were judges David Ma­janja, Smokin Wan­jala, Kathurima M’noti, Mo­hammed Ibrahim and Msagah Mbogholi.

Maraga had said he would ad­vo­cate for the ex­ten­sion of the time to hear a pres­i­den­tial pe­ti­tion from the cur­rent 14 days to 30 days to en­sure judges have am­ple time to con­sider is­sues raised at length.

In an ear­lier re­port, his team had also directed that the Supreme Court only han­dles the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion pe­ti­tion to avoid be­ing over­whelmed. The Court of Ap­peal should act as fi­nal court in pe­ti­tions for the post of gover­nor, sen­a­tor and MP. The pe­ti­tions by MCA should end at the High Court, the re­port sug­gests.

How­ever, this rec­om­men­da­tion was not im­ple­mented as the Supreme Court, un­der former CJ Willy Mu­tunga, ad­mit­ted pe­ti­tions from gov­er­nors and MPs.